Too many contours to TopoToRaster into elevation?

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06-11-2013 08:38 AM
DeanPhilpot1
New Contributor
Simply put,

I am trying to convert 10m contours of an island into a rough picture of the elevation - there is no need for high accuracy here

Upon running the topo to raster tool it says there are too many points (1557 records in attribute table)

Do I just have to play with the number of iterations, or what options do I have here to end with a nice simple topographic map

I'm sure this is something someone can answer in 2 minutes and will take me a couple of clicks!

Thank you for your time and assistance

Dean
6 Replies
MarkBoucher
Occasional Contributor III
One idea is to simplify the polyline contours so there are not as many vertices, since accuracy is not that important. Search for simplify or generalization. There are tools not available to me right now for some reason.

I have no idea if this will help with the number of topo points:  under Customize>ArcMap Options increase the number in the field circled in the image. Maybe there is another geoprocessing setting or other setting like this somewhere that will give you a higher limit of points.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25194[/ATTACH]
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SteveLynch
Esri Regular Contributor
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DeanPhilpot1
New Contributor
A friend of mine also suggested Lines to Point, then Points to Continuous

Anyway...

1) I bumped up the number of points via ArcMap Options and tried TopoToRaster again - FAILED! Maybe there are some of the options I should tinker with? See attached image

2) Dice - I'm sure it done something but I took it to 750,000 and re-ran TopoToRaster but FAILED saying "too many points in the contour polyline" so I diced it further to 500k, 250k, 100k and then to 10k at which point TopoToRaster WORKED

Thanks for the help

Dean
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SteveLynch
Esri Regular Contributor
Please don't convert the contours to points, that would not be a good idea.

Change the Dice size to, say less than 250000 and try, as the max number of vertices allowed in the contour lines are dependent on the output raster size and the number of vertices in a contour line. If that does not work then try a smaller number.

and BTW, bumping up the number of point in ArcMap has no effect

Steve
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MarkBoucher
Occasional Contributor III

Possibly convert the contours to a raster and then symbolize it. Use the elevation value for the raster value and you could do some interesting representation.  Just another idea.

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curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Your cell size is .0019 m (1.9 cm) -- given the extent your output raster would be huge. Suggest setting the output cell size to something like 5.0 or 10.0, or even 25.0 if you want a more general surface.

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